Rendering Parallax Maps in Studio Max.

GIS3000

Hi there guys.

Is there a way to render a parallax map in the Studio max Viewport or at least through the Scanline or Mental ray renderer?

Thanks!

Mark Dygert

Yep, in Render To Texture it's called a height map.

Height map, Displacement map, Parallax map they are all virtually the same thing.

GIS3000

thanks for the reply Vig!

But i think i messed up. What i meant was to render an object WITH a parallax map applied to it.

The Xoliul shader can only display normal maps from what i have read. Can the scanline renderer allow me the preview an object with a parallax map? I dont wanna wait till i get a game engine in order to see if i had baked out a good height map.

Any suggestions?

thanks!

Mark Dygert

OOoOOo... I get ya now. Yea there are a few shaders that render height maps.
Mental Ray has one
http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/3ds_max/Autodesk_3ds_Max_9_Reference/height_displacement_shader_mental_ray.html

ShaderFX runs in the viewport and has relief mapping.
http://www.lumonix.net/Media/ShaderFX_ReliefMappingDemo.html

GIS3000

Awesome. Thanks!

Ive read the link for the Height map shader. Is this parallax mapping or displacement mapping? It does say that it displaces geometry.

thanks for clarifying.

GIS3000

So has anyone tried ShaderFX? I actually encountered a website of Ben Cloward. he also seems to have written a shader which can parallax map too. In fact, he claims to be working on shaderfX!

I tried his simple shader out. the normals display nicely but not the parallax (taken from the alpha of the normal map). Could it be due to the fact that parallax maps are best used on flat surfaces and not complex shapes?

thanks!

divi

he doesn't claim to, he is working on shader fx. its a nice node-based shader editor for max and it works really well for almost anything you can do in an engine shader editor.

it's free for individuals so just try it?

Eric Chadwick

Shader FX is a great tool! Some more about parallax mapping here:
http://wiki.polycount.com/ParallaxMap

Mark Dygert

Yea Ben had a huge hand in writing shaderFX it's his baby and probably more current than his sample parallax shader.

ShaderFX will only render in the viewport so if you're looking to render the scene in scanline mental ray you'll need to work with something else. and yea shaderFX is free so why not give it a spin, I love it. It also will output a .fx file you can load into max or other apps.

GIS3000

Thanks for all the replies!

I just downloaded shaderfx. Time to try it out!


Thanks again.